Yesterday, after Donald Trump improv’d his way off the national stage, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made history. Inauguration Day was unusual and elegant. In an Inaugural Address that focused on unifying a beleaguered country, President Biden urged common purpose in what he called this “winter of peril and significant promise.” And then, Amanda Gorman, the nation's first youth poet laureate, stole the show.

President Biden wasted no time in addressing the serious challenges that face the country. Yesterday afternoon, he signed 17 executive orders that began a new era in the fight against the coronavirus, and which dismantled some of the initiatives of his disgraced predecessor. Significantly, President Biden ordered that the United States will rejoin the international climate-change accords.

Today on Midday, analysis of the challenging road ahead for the Biden Harris Administration.

We start with E.R. Shipp, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the first Black woman laureate of the prize. She is a founding faculty member and associate professor with the School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University, and she directs Morgan’s Baltimore Reporting Project.

Then, Tom talks with reporter Julie Bykowicz, who covers money and national politics for The Wall Street Journal.

Julie Bykowicz and E.R. Shipp join us today on Zoom.

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